her day Miss
Mary would be free; and for a season, at least, Red Gulch would know her
no more. She was seated alone in the schoolhouse, her cheek resting on
her hand, her eyes half-closed in one of those daydreams in which Miss
Mary--I fear to the danger of school discipline--was lately in the habit
of indulging. Her lap was full of mosses, ferns, and other woodland
memories. She was so preoccupied with these and her own thoughts that a
gentle tapping at the door passed unheard, or translated itself into the
remembrance of far-off woodpeckers. When at last it asserted itself more
distinctly, she started up with a flushed cheek and opened the door.
On the threshold stood a woman the self-assertion and audacity of whose
dress were in singular contrast to her timid, irresolute bearing.

Miss Mary recognized at a glance the dubious mother of her anonymous
pupil. Perhaps she was disappointed, perhaps she was only fastidious;
but as she coldly invited her to enter, she half-unconsciously settled
her white cuffs and collar, and gathered closer her own chaste skirts.
It was, perhaps, for this reason that the embarrassed stranger, after a
moment's hesitation, left her gorgeous parasol open and sticking in the
dust beside the door, and then sat down at the farther end of a long
bench. Her voice was husky as she began:

"I heerd tell that you were goin' down to the Bay tomorrow, and I
couldn't let you go until I came to thank you for your kindness to my
Tommy."

Tommy, Miss Mary said, was a good boy, and deserved more than the poor
attention she could give him.

"Thank you, miss; thank ye!" cried the stranger, brightening even
through the color which Red Gulch knew facetiously as her "war paint,"
and striving, in her embarrassment, to drag the long bench nearer the
schoolmistress. "I thank you, miss, for that! and if I am his mother,
there ain't a sweeter, dearer, better boy lives than him. And if I ain't
much as says it, thar ain't a sweeter, dearer, angeler teacher lives
than he's got."

Miss Mary, sitting primly behind her desk, with a ruler over her
shoulder, opened her gray eyes widely at this, but said nothing.

"It ain't for you to be complimented by the like of me, I know," she
went on, hurriedly. "It ain't for me to be comin' here, in broad day, to
do it, either; but I come to ask a favor--not for me, miss--not for me,
but for the darling boy."

Encouraged by a look in the young schoolmistress's eye, and putting h